Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

The Deputy merely bowed and returned to his own table, beckoning to one of the policemen near the door and giving the necessary orders to carry out the directions of his superior. So that almost by the time the two friends reached Broadway, and certainly some time before Leslie concluded his illustrative narration of police management in Naples, the arrangement for which they had especially come, and which had been apparently denied, was already in active operation. The reasons which had induced the Superintendent to underrate to Harding and Leslie the importance of the intelligence he had just received, or which had led to so sudden a change of mind, will probably remain a mystery even after the profounder mysteries of governmental management during the war are brought into broad daylight. There is no Sphynx like your "man in authority," whether his reasons for silence be that he does not wish others to know his intentions, or that he does not know them himself.

It was perhaps one o'clock when the two friends reached Broadway and turned downward to return to their different places of business—Harding of course to his store near the Hospital, and Leslie to his little desk in the office of the Daily Thundergust, or anywhere else in the more frequented parts of the town, where he might chance to pick up material for an item or an article. Broadway at that point and at that moment presented an appearance that used to be extraordinary, but that of late months has been almost as common as its ordinary crowded condition. One of the Eastern regiments, that had just landed at the New Haven Railroad Depot, was on its way down to the Park Barracks, and the police had been clearing the street of omnibuses and carriages to make room for them. The sidewalks on both sides were pretty well filled with spectators—idlers who never find anything better to do than gazing at street spectacles, and people of both sexes, with more or less of business on hand, who cannot avoid pausing for a moment when the police sweep by to clear the street and the tap of the bass-drum is heard,—just to see what the excitement is all about. In this instance a file of policemen extending almost from curb to curb were marching abreast to keep the way clear in front of the regiment; close behind them sounded the crashing of brass, the screaming of clarionet-reeds and the tap of drums; and a little farther behind, over the heads of the advancing column, a couple of flags caught the sun and waved softly in the light summer air—one the glorious old banner, with its three colors that blend truth, purity and devotion till death,—and the other a fringed and tasselled embroidery of dark blue silk, bearing the peculiar arms of the one State that was sending forth more of its bravest sons to do battle for all.

"A Massachusetts regiment," said Harding. "One was to come down by the New Haven Road, this morning."

"Yes," said Leslie. "You can afford half an hour more, while I can afford all day if I wish. Let us wait until the show passes." They paused accordingly and took shelter beside a lamp-post against the downward pressure of the sidewalk crowd that was coming.

Nearer came the soldiers, their long line of sloped bayonets glancing off the sunbeams with a peculiarly threatening aspect, and their equipments showing the perfection which has been accorded by the Old Bay State to all her troops, in contradistinction to the men of some of the other States, that have been allowed to go down to the conflict looking more like a mob of scarecrows than a body of trained soldiers. The Colonel, who rode first, lolled easily on his saddle, like one who had not mounted a horse for the first time when he first put on his sword-belts; the Captains of the various companies stepped out boldly and clearly in front of their men, turning occasionally to see that the line was properly kept; and the rank and file tramped on, their step almost steady enough for the march of veteran troops, and the dull thunder of the fall of each thousand of feet on the solid pavement, making the most impressive sound in the world except that supplied by the multitudinous clink of the iron hoofs of a cavalry squadron passing over the same stony road.

It was an impressive spectacle, like all of the same kind that have preceded and followed it—a glorious spectacle, when the faces of most of the men were observed, and nothing of the despairing dullness of the conscript's eye seen there, but the vigorous pride and determination of men who were going forth at the call of their country to battle for that country to the death. And yet a sad spectacle, as all the others have been, when waste of life and mismanagement of power were taken into the account, and when the thinned ranks that should return, of the full ranks that went so proudly away, came to be remembered. Something of this latter feeling, and the peculiarities of the time, made the waving of handkerchiefs and the clapping of hands less frequent and cordial than the fine-looking fellows and their excellent appointments really deserved.

"The d—l take the politics and policy of Massachusetts!" broke out Tom Leslie, when the array had half passed. "I do not like her, and never did. But she does send out troops as the old Trojan horse poured out heroes; she does know how to equip and take care of them, as we do not; and they fight—oh, Harding, don't they?"

"Not any better than most of our New York troops, I fancy!" replied Harding, an incarnate New Yorker, to the last observation.

"Not better, perhaps, but more steadily—not so dashingly, but more inevitably," said Leslie, going into one of his fits of abstract philosophy, where he must perforce be followed, like a maniac by his keeper. "Our New York boys go into the fight more as a spree—the New Englanders more as a duty. Our boys enjoy it—they endure it; and some one else than myself must decide which is the higher order of courage. Almost all the New Englanders are comparatively fanatics, while we have very few indeed, unless it may be fanaticism to worship the old flag—God bless it! If it could have been possible for England to be plunged into a general war with some other country, immediately after the Restoration, something like this same distinction would have been seen. Sir Gervase Langford would have charged upon the foe, his feathers flying and his lady's colors woven into a love-knot above his cuirass, singing a roundelay of decidedly loose tendencies, precisely as he had once charged beside Prince Rupert on the bloody day of Long Marston; and Master John Grimston would have snuffled a psalm through his nose and made a thanksgiving prayer over a cut throat, swinging his long two-handed sword meanwhile, as he had done when mowing down the 'malignants' at Naseby, under the very eye of Oliver himself. That would have been an odd mixture for the same army; but we have an odder, when the neat-whiskered clerk from behind the dry-goods counter in this city—the rough fisherman from Cape Cod—the lumberman from the forests of Maine—and the long, gangling squirrel-hunters from the wilds of Wisconsin,—all meet together to fight for the same cause."

"True," said Harding—"true. And I suppose that fanaticism does fight well. It has no fear of death, and very little of consequences. How much difference was there, I wonder, between Ali at the head of his Moslem horde, fresh from the teachings of Mohammed himself, and fully impressed with the belief that if he died he should go at once to the company of the Houris in Paradise,—and Cromwell—or Old John Brown—in a corresponding madness of supposed Christianity? Not much, eh?"